Comments on: Naxxramas Revisitedhttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/
MMOs and game designSat, 08 Aug 2015 21:38:35 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Simon Jones who is bloglesshttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2279
Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:55:30 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-2279One of my issues with Naxx is that it isn’t a particuarly good tutorial for WotLK raiding in so far as it reflects the design philsophies of a different iteration of the game. Compare it with kara, for example, which did teach you the basic lessons needed for BC raiding. Don’t stand in the fire and learn to be mobile. Interact with this item at the right time. Learn who to kill and when. Learn to deal with adds. Whereas Naxx not only uses a lot of design ideas from Vanilla, it uses toned down versions of the final design ideas of vanilla in a way that doesn’t resemble who the new raids work. OS, EoE and Uludar share common elements that don’t really show up in Naxx.

Also, it never drops my loot.

]]>By: Kirynhttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2254
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:25:07 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-2254I’ve never really understood why they didn’t make Naxx into five separate winged instances. Each wing would be an hour or less, depending on your group.

People would be much more likely to just do one wing in an evening, rather than trying to do the entire thing in one night because they might not be able to get the group back together again later.

You could pick and choose which wings you want to run, if you have a group makeup that would work well in a certain wing. Or if you don’t have any gear you need from a certain wing, you don’t have to do it that week.

If you still want to lock out Sapph/KT to people who finished all four wings, give it a simple attunement, make you finish this quest to kill the final boss of each wing before you’re allowed to enter the last one.

Just don’t make us do the entire place with the same group! It’s the main thing I hate about Naxx.

Right now all geared up the Rogues and Hunters and Mages are rocking the DPS. More than the 5-10% that they’re supposed to be according to Blizzard. The only exceptions are DKs and Feral Cats who are doing insane damage still. (nerfs inc)

Also no matter what loot system you use the dual specs and those who actually honestly do it well, always lag behind the pures and the one specs. It’s simple really, twice as much gear means twice as much DKP/Suicides/Council wins are needed. And don’t get me started on enchanting and gemming two completely separate sets of gear, that crap gets expensive stupidly fast.

According to Ghostcrawler Druid Tanks are the least played of the four and Warriors are still, nearly 5 years later, the defacto tank. So much so they’re not nerfing Druids as much as they want to and they’re not buffing Warriors as much as they want to because of the imbalance it would reinforce.

For buff coverage you only need one shaman, or one paladin or one warrior/feral to cover them. That leaves 15 slots for whoever can pump out the DPS.

That’s not to say that a disproportionate number of alts are not hybrids. It seems if it isn’t a DK it’s a hybrid of some sort. Only rarely do you see a Warrior alt or one of the pures. They tend to be mains much more than alts.

]]>By: Hatchhttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2250
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:04:21 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-22501) “these things aren’t really designed as fun social experiences for nervous raiders” …the game could benefit a lot by fixing this specific issue with the first raid instance being structured as a tutorial.

2) /highfive for walking out of the pug for sexist comments. I’ve done that a number of times myself. Most memorably, my guildies and I (3 healers and a tank!) left a voa 25 pug because one guy telling bad dps to stop with the “f**gottry” (there’s a new one) led to a litany of talking about how “gay” dying to emalon is. Bye bye, bigots! Enjoy replacing us!

3) Yep, hybrids are where it’s at right now. Here’s the key in my view:

a) in TBC, hybrids by design compensated for poor performance with major raid buffs
b) in wrath, hybrids were pumped up to perform comparably well, but…
c) THEY GOT TO KEEP ALL OF THEIR RAID BUFFS, and each pure dps class got one at best.

Have you compared the benefits say, a ret paladin brings to the raid over say a rogue or warlock? It’s mind boggling. The paladin brings literally 7-8 discreet raid buffs. The rogue brings, at best, one if they spec into it.

I think the solution in the next xpac is to reverse that trend. Give rogues a bloodlust equivalent, and use the new talent points to allow pure DPS classes to provide more and more raid buffs, while removing some talented raid buffs from hybrids. At the same time, actually enforce the “slightly superior dps”. I’d also recommend balancing pvp so the 4 pure classes are considered superior by the community (yes, even above DKs) for a few patch cycles. That should fix it right up.

I LOVE dual spec, even on my rogue, and can’t imagine an argument that could prove dual spec is bad. It’s GREAT. It’s just that the rest of the game wasn’t prepared for it.

They have gone too far with the hybrid love, and dual specs enforced that trend. Now it is too late.

This trend is also revealed in armory datamining, Shamans are on the rise but still among the less played classes. Death Knights, Druids and Paladins are the most popular classes nowadays and especially DK and Paladin are often replacing Warrior Tanks with their AoE tank capabilities.

]]>By: *vlad*https://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2244
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:10:31 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-2244Dual specs have made hybrids the preferred classes. If I log onto my main’s guild at any time there is a preponderance of Paladins, Druids and Shamen online.
Pre BC, hybrids were designed to be weaker than pure specs; now they are seen as the best classes.

Maybe it’s time for Blizzard to offer pure dps specs alternative healing/tanking builds.
Warlocks could become Demon tanks or Dark Menders; Rogues could be Bards (healing) or Monks (tanking), for example.

]]>By: jeffohttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2243
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:05:59 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-2243I can completely relate to the Naxx burnout you’d experienced. Our guild is one of those ‘undisciplined’ types that couldn’t clear in a single sitting (too many ‘afk bio’, ‘afk phone’, ‘afk, the cat’s on fire’, but we’re not ‘hardcore’ enough to boot people for constant afk’ing); between 10 and 25 man, with shots at Maly and Sarth, some of us would find ourselves in raids 5 nights a week! At any rate, there are efforts being made to bring up lesser-geared people, and even though I don’t want to go, I’m often finding myself dragging through the place on 25’s again. I console myself by telling myself that I’m helping the guild, but sometimes it’s REAL hard to get excited about heading in that place….again.
]]>By: Greenbornehttps://spinksville.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/naxxramas-revisited/#comment-2241
Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:21:24 +0000http://spinksville.wordpress.com/?p=1866#comment-2241This almost makes me realyl sad I uninstalled WoW and am missing out on raiding with you guys!
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